A seasoned reflection on the reality of conflict

I resolved to take full advantage of these golden shafts cutting through the more familiar regulation gloom, determined to stay out of doors as long as possible.

Incredibly, it was the third day of high pressure, so I dawdled for a while and spun out the trip by going slightly out of my way and pedalling on to the locks at Diglis island.

I never tire of this well-trodden path. Many a time I've picked up the pieces of a computer screen-addled brain and taken full advantage of the restorative powers of a moment or two's respite in the embrace of Sabrina, my secret lover.

It was about 2pm on this late winter Monday. However, the lightness of heart invariably associated with the approach of spring was missing. Usually, just to watch the sunlight dancing on the water by the weir is enough to lift the spirits.

Not this time though. Because, like everyone else I had been closely monitoring the national news that morning. Robin Cook had resigned, Clare Short had maybe, just maybe, come to the conclusion that it was not only Tony Blair who was capable of recklessness, and then there was the cause of all this woe.

War with Iraq.

It is dreadful to contemplate war at any time, but all the more depressing when conflict erupts at this time of year. There seems to be something utterly at odds with the natural order of things when people start killing each other in the season of rebirth.

Military campaigns have invariably started once the warmer weather arrives, but the juxtaposition of springtime and droning bomber overhead never fails to sound a wrong note in my head.

I can easily imagine autumn and winter warfare. The seasons of sleep, death and decay seem more appropriate to the process of destruction, somehow.

But spring, with the sun high in the heavens, the birds singing their heads off and the first flush of green on the hawthorn, does seem to be the wrong time for destruction.

Anyway, I don't support this war, although the combatants' choice of season is only one reason why I disagree. I do, however, fully support the soldiers, sailors and airmen who are obliged to step in when the politicians fail.

My heart goes out to them. I wouldn't swap my comfortable, privileged, soft, relatively danger-free life for one single second of theirs. I take my hat off to them, salute their bravery, professionalism and expertise.

But I can't, in all conscience, sit in my old dog basket of an armchair every night, and like so many men of a certain age, become an instant "expert".

Every pub in the land now features these people propping up the bar, boring the backsides off anyone stupid enough to listen for more than eight seconds.

"I'll tell you what, I'd enlist tomorrow if I wasn't too old. I'm a crack shot, I am, used to be in the village air rifle team... they'd probably want me in the SAS, what with my training."

Oh, shut up, for God's sake. If I've heard one idiot who thinks he can perform unarmed combat just because he did a judo course at the Perdiswell back in 1986, then I must have heard a hundred.

Wars always bring out the worst in people. Especially a certain kind of bloke.

The thing is this. For the last 100 years, the British have been rather adept at going to the rescue of other countries. Not since Omdurman in 1896, when we invaded a sovereign territory in order to lure thousands of Dervishes into musket range of our well-drilled redcoats, have we walked into another country without prior invite.

Yes, yes. I realise that is a matter of opinion - but this is my opinion and that's all that matters for the purposes of this particular Phillpott File.

Try as I may, I can find no reason why I should support this war. For one thing, there is no proven link between the Stalinism of Saddam Hussein and the Islamic fundamentalism of Osama bin Laden.

Neither is the brutal Saddam really much worse than the dismal array of despots that America and Britain have, for years, been perfectly happy to support or offer comfort. Besides, is North Korea next on the list?

And if so, where do we stop then? What about all those nasty little set-ups in South America and other parts of the Far East? I can't believe we are going to fight them all.

Tony Blair and George Bush have drawn parallels between Saddam's Iraq in 2003 and Hitler's Germany of 1939. But where is the Gulf state equivalent of the annexation of the Sudetenland? Or Czechoslovakia?

And even if nearby states are threatened, since when has Iraq shown any interest in the kind of global domination envisaged by the Third Reich in the 1930s?

A kind of collective hysteria seems to have afflicted our leaders. Tony Blair appears to have completely forgotten about his previous obsession - closer links with Europe - and embarked on a mad, passionate love affair with Texan-style republicanism.

As France and Germany pull their usual stunt and hold each other's hands and hope the nasty man will just go away, all talk of further integration goes the way of the proverbial snowball in hell.

Meanwhile, New Labour allies itself with the Tories as the Blairite rank-and-file fears to express any view at all, just in case it's the wrong one, and they get into trouble for being caught red-handed in possession of an opinion.

The fact is that the kind of Britain, I, and countless others want to see, is a country freed from the twin axis of an increasingly ambitious America and a corrupt, Brussels-dominated European superstate.

Empires - the old word for superstates - are tragically prone to wars. Have we learnt nothing from the history books?

I say all this with a heavy heart. I have nothing but compassion and admiration for the British armed forces. I am not a pacifist. War is often justified. The politicians, as ever, are the ones we must hold to account for whatever will come after this conflict.

The soldier mortgages his life to his country. He takes the oath of allegiance upon enlistment and from then on, his destiny is in the hands of people he will probably never meet.

Few of us could imagine showing devotion to a job that might well end in death. But that is what they cheerfully do for those in power and a fickle public that is indifferent until the drums start beating.

Rudyard Kipling knew all about that.

So, spring has now arrived in England and those of us with fewer cares can rejoice in being alive. Taking walks, doing a bit of gardening... sat by the river watching the world go by.

But 2,000 or so miles to the east, men are marching and death is in the air. And I don't like it one bit.

For as a non-combatant, I will quietly, soberly hope for the resumption of peace in this troubled part of the world - and pray that our servicemen and women will prevail so that the sun can once more shine through the darkness of this particularly bleak episode in world affairs.